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I found an insight from an article with a map showing 173 individual hurricanes hitting land on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts from 1850 to present. I decided to see if the upward sloping curve caused by warming ocean temperatures I have always heard about from the climate change people would show more extreme weather. Intensity should be related to the number of land falls and assessment of winds. The number of landfalls seems random. In the second 100 years I counted 13 compared to 9 category four or five storms in the first 100. From what I know of statistics, I doubt that is really significant.

173 Years of US Hurricane Strikes

https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4285273/posts

1851-60: 17

1861-70: 17

1871-80: 20

1881-90: 20 (1)

1891-00: 28 (1)

1901-10: 23

1911-20: 21 (1)

1921-30: 17 (1)

1931-40: 24 (2)

1941-50: 31 (4)

1951-60: 35 (3)

1961-70: 17 (2)

1971-80: 15 (1)

1981-90: 18 (1)

1991-00: 15 (2)

2001-10: 23

2011-20: 19 (2)

2021-24: 12 (1)

Concerning a single event, I had the 20:00 to 24:00 OOD watch on the bridge on our ship as Typhoon Rose passed over Hong Kong in 1971. The eye was six miles from us. The measuring device at the British weather station broke as the winds exceeded 175 miles per hour. We were tied to a buoy right off Fenwick Pier rated for battleships. There were no waves, but the winds screamed.

With a “fair coin” 13 versus 9 is certainly statistically significant. These are random events, so the uncertainty is Poissonian: the variance is +/-3.6 for 13 and +/-3 for 9. The standard deviations, then are +/1.9 and 1.73, respectively. So, at two standard deviations, the averages are distinct.

But, more importantly, it’s not a remotely fair coin. There’s no way we ever measured the peak winds for anything other than land-falling hurricanes more than about 100 years ago, and there’s no way we did it particularly well more than about 50 years ago. You have the random ship out in the middle of the Atlantic that was in the right place at the right time in, let’s say, 1900, but if it’s in position to make peak wind measurements in a Cat 4 or 5 storm, I doubt anyone is bothering to make measurements and I doubt it’s a better than 50/50 chance they’d be able to tell anyone about it after the fact.

For anyone keeping track, in both 2023 and 2025, there was only 1 additional hurricane after 01 October. In 2024, there were four additional hurricanes after 01 October. But 2024 was also an intense season with 12 total hurricanes, 5 more than the typical 7. So it’s probably pretty safe to say we’re not likely to see more than 1 or 2 hurricanes before November 30.

But don’t bet the farm on it.